The Perfect Desktop - Mandriva One 2010.1 Spring With GNOME

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This tutorial shows how you can set up a Mandriva One 2010.1 Spring desktop (with the GNOME desktop environment) that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Preliminary Note

To fully replace a Windows desktop, I want the Mandriva One 2010.1 Spring desktop to have the following software installed:

Other:

VirtualBox OSE - lets you run your old Windows desktop as a virtual machine under your Linux desktop, so you don't have to entirely abandon Windows

TrueType fonts

Java

Read/Write support for NTFS partitions

As you might have noticed, a few applications are redundant, for example there are two CD/DVD burning applications in my list (Brasero, K3B). If you know which one you like best, you obviously don't need to install the other applications, however if you like choice, then of course you can install both. The same goes for music players like Amarok, Banshee, Rhythmbox, XMMS or browsers (Firefox, Opera).

I will use the username falko in this tutorial, and I will download all necessary files to falko's download directory which is equivalent to the directory /home/falko/Downloads. If you use another username (which you most probably do ;-)), please replace falko with your own username. So when I use a command like

The system will now boot into a live system from where you can install Mandriva to your hard drive. Before we can see the live desktop, we have to answer a few questions.

First, choose your language:

Accept the Mandriva license:

Select your timezone:

Select your time. Under Advanced, you can enable Automatic time synchronization (using NTP):

Select your keyboard layout:

Finally, the live desktop starts. To install Mandriva One 2010.1 Spring to your hard drive, click on the Install on Hard Disk icon:

The installation wizard starts. Click on Next:

Mandriva's default partitioning scheme is ok for our purposes, so you can select Use free space (if you want to set up your own partitioning scheme, select Custom disk partitioning instead). Afterwards the hard drive will be partitioned.

Click on Next to remove unnecessary packages from the installation:

Afterwards, the system is being installed to your hard drive. This can take a few minutes, so please be patient:

Afterwards we have to configure the bootloader. The default settings are ok, so we can click on Next:

The default boot menu entries are ok as well, so we click on Finish:

Click on Finish to complete the installation:

To use our new installation, we must reboot and remove the Mandriva CD from our CD drive. Log out of the current desktop session (System > Shut Down...), then select Restart from the upcoming menu:

You will be asked to remove the Mandriva CD/DVD from the CD drive. Press ENTER once you've done this:

Falko Timme is an experienced Linux administrator and founder of Timme Hosting, a leading nginx business hosting company in Germany. He is one of the most active authors on HowtoForge since 2005 and one of the core developers of ISPConfig since 2000. He has also contributed to the O'Reilly book "Linux System Administration".

I agree with this. Until recently i've been a GNOME (on Ubuntu) user. But let me tell you, recently I started exploring other distros and so I've stumbled upon Mandriva where KDE is default. And so far from what I've seen KDE is a lot better than GNOME, in almost every aspect. A lot more modern technologies in there, like semantic desktop, desktop built out of components so very custumizable. Even backgrounds are plugins. And there is rating/commenting/tagging supported across entire desktop. not to mention how gorgeous KDE looks. Even the applications like Dolphin file manager, K3b disc burner, Amarok music player, Gwenview image viwer and similar are a lot more powerful than GNOME counterparts. In short I'm so much more happier with Mandriva and KDE that I've switched away from Ubuntu/GNOME.